[1] Hegel pleads strongly for codification.
[2] _De la Division du Travail Social,_ 225 ff.
A more intimate relation to the State proper--to a definite principle, as we might say, of common good--grows out of the interests of Bourgeois Society which take the shape of what a German calls “Police and Corporation,” _i.e._ State regulation and Trade Societies.
The basis of State regulation is the emergence of aspects of common interest in the system of particular interests. The region of particular interests (supply and demand) has an accidental side, and the State has a right and a duty to protect the general good against accidental { 278} hindrances. On the whole, no doubt, the right relation between producer and consumer arises of itself, but miscarriages may occur which call for interference on behalf of the explicit [1] principle of the general good. The _general_ possibility of the individual’s obtaining what he wants is a public interest, and the State has a right to intervene with this end in view, both by execution of necessary public works, by sanitary inspection and the like, and by inspection and control of fraud in the case of necessary commodities offered for sale to the general public. For the public offer of goods in daily use is not a purely private concern, but a matter of the general interest. If indeed there was complete official regulation, there would be a risk of getting work like the Pyramids, that represented no private want at all; but yet, in the system of private wants, there is a public interest that demands vigilance.
[1] The _explicit_ idea of common good always belongs in Hegel to the State proper.
A similar approximation of Bourgeois Society to the State is constituted by the “Corporation,” which rests on the facts of class. Every member of the Bourgeois Society belongs by his vocation to a class, and this breaking up into classes is a consequence of the division of labour which prevails in the economic sphere, disguising the common good as private interest or necessity. But in the formation of classes society begins as it were to recover from the dispersion which private interest has occasioned. As a member of his class [1] or { 279} “estate,” the citizen acquires solidarity with his fellows, and his particular interest becomes _ipso facto_ a common one. As a member of the class, again, he is, or ought to be, a member of his “trade society” or “corporation.” In this he finds his honour or recognition, [2] a definite standard of life (apart from which he is apt to assert himself by aimless extravagance, for want of a recognised respectability), a standard of work, insurance against misfortune, and (as a candidate for admission) the means of technical education.